


"A kiss with a fist is better than none": regarding Dean/Castiel & abuse.

by orphan_account



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Supernatural
Genre: Abuse, Abusive Relationship, Commentary, Community: hc_bingo, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Meta - Freeform, Reclaim all the narratives, References to Suicide, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2012-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-10 06:24:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/463186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>sassygayangel asks:</b> <i>Have you ever written a piece regarding the whole debate I saw once about whether or not Dean/Cas is abusive (either to each other or as a ship itself)? I would love to read your meta about it as I enjoy your thinky thoughts very much.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	"A kiss with a fist is better than none": regarding Dean/Castiel & abuse.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by a tumblr ask, going toward "grief," for hc_bingo — with the interpretation of "grief" not necessarily as, "the sadness and emotions following death," but as, "the process of coping with awful situations."

**sassygayangel asked:** _Have you ever written a piece regarding the whole debate I saw once about whether or not Dean/Cas is abusive (either to each other or as a ship itself)? I would love to read your meta about it as I enjoy your thinky thoughts very much._

That'd be a pretty resounding, "no," and… the big reason is that I'm not really sure where I fall on the issue? And a big issue for me trying to talk about Dean and Cas's relationship in the, "is it or is it not abusive" context is that… I'm like Britta Perry on this count? I don't count because I don't react to anything appropriately.

I mean, I'm That Person who sits over here, going, "why is dark!fic a SPECIAL INTEREST in this fandom, why doesn't EVERYBODY write DARK!FIC, our source text is MADE FOR DARK FIC. ugh, why is fluff so PERVASIVE" — and I'm the sort of person who ships certain things BECAUSE they are bad and wrong and Made Of Issues (see: Dukat/Kai Winn, Sam/Ruby, Lucifer/Gabriel, Dean/Alpha Vamp, Dean/Alastair, Snape/Barty Crouch Jr., Barty Crouch Jr./Bellatrix, Bellatrix/Andromeda… I could go on but I won't).

so… yeah, I definitely feel like my perspective here is a bit too biased to be useful to anybody but me? which is a big reason why I haven't put too much work into sorting out my thoughts on the matter? Which I'm still not really doing in this post. This post is more some loosely connected word-vomit that only really adds up to, "*shrugs* I don't know?"

I can definitely see _moments_ where Dean and Castiel come off in a way that could be read as abusive of each other — see: season six and Dean going CAS MY PROBLEMS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOURS; see also: season six and Cas going WELL THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO HELP ME SO LET'S NOT TALK ABOUT ANYTHING; see also also: Dean not really taking Cas's thoughts on, "you are NOT gonna die a virgin" into account and dragging him to a brothel; see additionally: Cas curb-stomping Dean in "Point Of No Return."

…but I really hesitate to call anything about Dean/Castiel abusive. Mostly, this is because I don't think that these really represent a pervasive pattern in their relationship that would characterize either Dean and Cas as individuals, or as participants in a relationship, or the nature of that relationship overall? Definitely not in the same way that John's absenteeism, neglect, and abuse are made to characterize his relationship with his sons.

Furthermore, I don't really think that we have any reasons to conclude that Dean and Castiel's relationship _would_ develop such a pattern and become abusive.

I do think that it _could_ go that way, much in the same way that I hate how, in the Harry Potter books, JK Rowling gave Harry this terrible, awful, abusive/neglectful cycle of a childhood and then… never actually dealt with it. At all. I would've loved it so much more, had Harry gone to the Wizarding World and found out that he couldn't just run from his problems by going off to Shiny Magic School. If he'd found parallels to the problems he left behind, and cycles of things, and somehow turned this into coping with his "mundane" problems.

Except that this never happened. JKR reminded us of "mundane" problems throughout the series — c.f., _Order of the Phoenix_ , where Harry and Cho are BOTH distraught over Cedric's death and NEITHER of them is really getting any help — but she always wound up giving precedence to the magical problems. To a degree, this is understandable, since… saving the world IS important to anyone who likes living. To a _degree_ she tried to avoid it, like by focusing on the emotional element of Lupin's story arc more than just, "Remus Lupin is a werewolf, OOOOO" (that was part of the arc but didn't define it, if that makes any sense).

But on the other hand, we end up with the entire premise of the books being, "Harry fixes his abusive situation just by not being there anymore and saves himself and turns into a hero without needing to cope with ANYTHING EVER." In fact, it's implied that coping with things is a luxury that Harry doesn't get to have. Because Harry has to save the Wizarding world instead, and things like domestic abuse aren't REALLY important when compared to the WHOLE WORLD.

…well, okay, sure. Whole world vs. One person. I'd say that the whole world pretty much wins that, hands down — but remember how everything is fundamentally interconnected? So taking that one person out of the equation screws up EVERYTHING? It's not that the fate of everything rests on one person, like the mythology that the HP books created, but it's the sort of balance that gets struck up in the last three episodes of Doctor Who's fourth series ("Turn Left," "The Stolen Earth," and "Journey's End"):

 **everything has effects and consequences, which effect everything else, so changing any given major element can change _everything_** — Or, more basically and more relevantly to this discussion: okay, sure, Wizarding World, Harry totally doesn't need to cope with all of his ~Muggle problems~ …but will you still be saying that when your Chosen One has a complete psychological collapse and becomes totally non-functional?

Back when I was more actively roleplaying in journal and writing-based, play-by-post-style games (mostly set in the HP fandom), one of my favorite things a few friends and I wound up playing was an Albus Severus-era plot-line where we really addressed the whole, "Harry never coped with jack squat" plot-line… which snow-balled into Harry becoming an abusive father himself.

Because as I said above, he basically went from one abusive situation — the Dursleys' — to another — Dumbledore the Chronically Absent Mentor training him to be a child soldier/tyke-bomb against Lord Voldemort, never explaining anything, constantly jerking him around, not really helping Harry cope with HUGELY TRAUMATIC SITUATIONS (e.g., watching a classmate's murder, narrowly avoiding death multiple times, the list goes on)… and I don't care what kind of bow Dumbledore puts on this shit, that is not exactly a recipe for mental health, OR for a person who should be in charge of anything to do with goddamned LAW ENFORCEMENT, seriously JK Rowling I know Harry wanted to be an Auror but COME ON NOW.

(…like, seriously? My Albus Severus at that game infinitely preferred Draco, Astoria, and Narcissa Malfoy to his own parents because… sure. Narcissa wasn't exactly thrilled that AlSev was a Halfblood and her grandson's BFF, and Draco and Astoria weren't perfect… but they didn't have the ongoing cycle of emotional neglect, emotional and physical abuse, and trying to pretend like everything was Hunky Fucking Dory for the press because, hello, high-profile family that Harry and Ginny did.)

…and sort of getting back to the point of this post here: I _do_ think that Dean and Castiel are both profoundly unwell individuals. I think that denying this, the way that Show and Fandom both like to do (in their own respective ways), is at best irresponsible, and at worst ableist (no really, go on, tell me how Dean can't be depressed, an alcoholic, AND a hero — take all the time in the world you want to shame his mental health issues. I can wait because, ultimately, all I have to say to that can be best expressed by the incomparable Martha Jones).

So, yeah. Dean and Castiel aren't exactly stunning portraits of mental health over here. They've both got issues, they've both got baggage, and they're both pretty seriously unwell. There's pretty much no way they wouldn't be, after going through what they have (both together and separately… hello, abusive childhood and eons of life as a soldier, watching death and bloodshed, anybody?) — but what separates abusive _moments_ from **abuse** is that presence of a recurring pattern.

And yeah, patterns are made up of moments. I know the songs from _Into the Woods_ , too. Blah blah, _Any moment, big or small / Is a moment after all / Seize the moment, skies may fall_. Yadda yadda, _Days are made of moments / All are worth exploring / Many kinds of moments / None are worth ignoring_ … but what we're talking about here is infinitely more complicated than that. (Which is really saying something because, "Any Moment" and "Moments In The Woods" make up one of the most morally difficult parts of a play that's based on being morally difficult.)

And abuse is morally difficult, across the board, and starting with defining and recognizing it. Making any blanket statements about it is fundamentally reductionist and exclusivist, which makes it basically impossible to do while maintaining any kind of semblance of morality. If your definition leaves people out, then you're invalidating their experiences — but if your definition includes everybody, then it doesn't serve its purpose as a definition. It doesn't label or differentiate or _define_. It loses all its meaning as a word.

But evaluating everything on a case-by-case basis is similarly nigh impossible because that means you'd have to go over EVERY SINGLE CASE and that's asking too much of anybody. Plus, you'd have to take all kinds of points about context (personal, cultural, etc.) into account — but with this caveat and disclaimer, I'm going to try to make some statements that define what differentiates abuse from abusive moments, because… this meta really, really needs me to do so.

Abuse is not just, "there are all these moments where someone I love hurt my feelings, or hurt me, or so on, but admitted it and we worked through it." This is what would define abusive moments. Isolated incidents of people being dicks to each other — even several isolated incidents — don't make up a pattern as much as they're snags in the fabric of something bigger.

Abuse, on the other hand, is, "there are all these moments that happen over and over and over again, where someone I love hurt me (intentionally or not), but wouldn't admit it, and invalidated me and my feelings and my experiences, and excused their behavior instead of apologizing, and made me feel fundamentally broken and wrong and self-doubting because maybe I was just making up the experience of abuse for attention, and they swore it would never happen again but it always does."

Does that make sense? I really hope I'm making sense, because… unfortunately, when I get talking about this topic, it's pretty much always difficult for me to be a hundred percent objective about anything I'm discussing. Personal experiences give me a lot of investment in this matter and I'm fundamentally biased in everything I have to say about abuse.

But what I'm getting at is that… people fight and disagree with each other. That doesn't mean that every relationship is abusive. It doesn't mean that you should ditch a relationship because someone you're with said something that hurt your feelings once, or you had a few fights, or so on. Abuse emerges when there are persistent and pervasive patterns of behavior in one partner that invalidate, shame, and otherwise harm another (or multiple others).

("Partner" here being used to just mean, "participant in a relationship, be it romantic, platonic, sexual, familial, societal [e.g., King and subjects, Congressperson and constituency, etc.], or any other kind.")

And I just don't really see that kind of a pattern with Dean and Castiel? I hesitate to say that their relationship outright ISN'T abusive because, as all of my experiences talking about John Winchester have taught me, this is a really difficult thing to talk about in fandom contexts. A lot of people will have an infinite number of readings of the text, and their individual experiences inform everything, and there is a risk of invalidating or judging someone's experiences in saying, definitively, "this thing is abusive, this one is not."

But I still don't really agree with the reading of Dean and Castiel as especially abusive individuals or as an abusive relationship. I appreciate where it's coming from, but I don't agree with it or see it in them. Not even when they're at their most fucked up — for instance and by way of examples: season five; season six; and plenty of AU ideas I've batted around… the one coming to mind right now is the one ~temporalranger and I were talking about last night, wherein, at one moment, Dean said something to the tune of, "I want to get back together with you, Cas, but I think we both need help if we're gonna make this work, as individuals and as a couple."

This pattern thing is an important distinction that I don't think a lot of people make when talking about abuse, but… considering that the dominant narrative of abuse (in Show and in the fandom) is, "abusers are COMPLETELY UNSYMPATHETIC, IRREDEEMABLE MONSTERS" and, "one misstep RUINS EVERYTHING," this isn't completely surprising. Overwhelmingly, we're sort of loath to call people or situations abusive because being abusive means that someone is a MONSTER and TERRIBLE FOREVER and CAN NEVER EVER BE REDEEMED BECAUSE ONLY MONSTERS ABUSE ANYBODY ESPECIALLY KIDS—

which, I think, is part of why I get any shit at all for saying that I think John Winchester is abusive, even though I almost always clarify that I understand and even empathize with John's situation… but I still don't think that his actions are okay.

(this is all also part of why it really surprises me that the, "Dean/Cas is abusive!" perspective is as common as it is, _especially_ when the most common rendering of it is, "Dean is such an abusive boyfriend to poor, prettyful Castiel." I just can't even with that. It almost always coincides with someone believing in woobie!Cas above all other interpretations of Cas, which makes me want to pull on my hair, scream, cry, and kick inanimate objects. Like, I don't even really have words for how much woobie!Cas infuriates me.

Dear Fandom: look, okay, I get it. Castiel manifests on Earth in the shape of one, Misha Collins, who is a creature of unearthly fucking beauty… but this woobie!Cas bullshit HAS GOT TO FUCKING STOP. I object to woobie-fying anybody on principle, but come ON. you're not sticking up for Cas, here. You're taking a character who is amazing and strong and morally grey and… you're turning around to define him by Dean Winchester, who I love but who should never be used to define ANYBODY, especially not when you're saying that Cas isn't an angel of the LORD and can't take care of him-fucking-self.

And in so doing, you're perpetuating an idea of how to read stories and interact with narratives that is fucking HURTFUL to real-life people, in the real world. You just can't act like binary, black and white, good and evil moral dichotomies really exist or else you're going to fundamentally fail to understand everything you come in contact with — be it another real-life person or a ship. It's sort of contradictory to the idea of Fandom as escapism, too, since it helps lead too people being dicks to other fans, but that's another matter for another post.)

All in all, though, context is SO FUCKING IMPORTANT that this discussion literally can't breathe without it. To sort of explain all of that word-vomit (and maybe work on getting to a conclusion) by way of contrasting Dean/Cas to the abusive situation I rant about a lot… John Winchester and how he treats his sons.

We see glimpses of John being an asshole to his kids, not being around for his kids, being an even bigger asshole to his kids, being pretty blatantly verbally abusive to his kids and especially Dean (with heavy implications of physical abuse), yelling at and shaming his kids for wanting to have normal, age-appropriate experiences (c.f. "Something Wicked," where Dean was WRONG FOREVER because he wanted to be a kid and play video games, and how John handled Sam wanting to go to college), being a self-righteous dick about WHY he did all these things ("I just wanted to protect you, I know better than you do"), and so on, and so forth, and for me?

Aside from the first scenes of the pilot and the flashbacks to when he didn't have kids (and in the first, wasn't even engaged to Mary yet), I don't really think we see anything else of John. …but we're told things that make his perspective make sense, in a really tragic way. He's a Vietnam veteran. He was in the US Marines, which was an even worse position to be in, re: Vietnam, than other US military institutions. He's a mechanic from a family of mechanics, and he thought that in marrying Mary Campbell, he was going to get a normal, happy, apple-pie suburban life.

But they couldn't run from Mary's hunter past, and John couldn't run from his trauma in Vietnam, his military training. As soon as he suffered the major trigger of Mary's loss, he really stopped being Sam and Dean's dad; he's been called and likened to a drill sergeant in canon, and I think that's really what he was. He was their drill sergeant. He was their father, when it suited his purposes (i.e., when he needed to manipulate them into agreeing with him).

But he didn't really raise them to be anything EXCEPT soldiers, warriors, hunters. Dean tried to give Sam better than that, and Bobby tried to give both of the boys better than that — but it still doesn't change what _John_ did.

Just on their own, John's actions are fairly horrifying — I mean, hello, this is a guy who couldn't even pick up a phone when one of his sons was LITERALLY DYING. They're more so for me because they remind me too much of my mother for me to take comfort in anything about them. But context explains things. Context makes John's perspective and actions understandable, even something you can empathize with — but it doesn't make them OKAY.

Just like context is important for understanding WHY John treated his kids the way he did, context is important to remember when talking about Dean and Castiel's moments of disregard, contempt, and other not-so-nice things for each other. Context explains what Dean and Cas are really doing. Context explains why they're doing it and what the significance of it is. And while context doesn't make these moments okay, I think it DOES show that they're not really a pervasive pattern in the same way that I've posited defines abuse.

They're not great moments, for either Dean or Cas. Both of them are pretty guilty here, but I still don't see abuse as much as I see moments of mutually hurtful behavior that Dean and Cas need to work through. We don't get to SEE them working through these things in canon — partly because Canon is still sticking to the, "LOLOLOLOL NO HOMO THO" queer-baiting story of how Dean and Castiel are "boyfriends" and "in love," but not in a gay relationship because we say so; and partly because, more often than not, their context is pretty freaking horrifying.

How many Apocalypses have they averted in the past three seasons? At least three? Four, if you count Eve's attempt to exterminate humanity and replace them with monsters? …Yeah, no. I can see why we're sort of lacking in scenes where Dean and Cas. I mean, they regularly don't have the time to sit down and work through all of their issues. They often barely have time to get a, "sit on the hood of the car and talk about their feelings" scene like Sam and Dean get, because as though the rest weren't enough, it's also not like Dean can _seriously_ ask Cas to give up everything else just to be down there on Earth with Dean. Cas has other shit to do, and Dean understands that.

Sure, he lashes out sometimes — see, telling Cas to tear up Heaven, looking for a cure for Sam's then-current situation of soullessness, when Cas is in the middle of a civil war — but to be fair? That lashing out is coming when _neither_ of them is being especially awesome toward the other. Cas is intimating to Dean what's going on with his situation in Heaven, but not being open with Dean or trusting him.

On the other hand: Dean is taking it out on Cas that he feels like he can't talk to anybody — because Sam is soulless, Bobby is busy, Dean has no reason to trust the Campbells, Rufus and Jody are Bobby's friends and not Dean's, everyone else he knows is dead, Cas, or Meg — and Dean wants Cas to be there for him more often. He wants to be the center of Cas's life and existence, even though he knows that this is unreasonable.

Then, the fact that it IS unreasonable doesn't help Dean any, because his untreated depressive disorder turns, "Dean, the world does not actually revolve around you, you're a part of something bigger called _All Of Existence_ ," into, "Dean, your problems are bullshit and no one cares about you, shut up." And he really, _really_ needs to talk to someone and air his problems and get help, but Dean can't ask for it. Dean's been trained to see opening up to anybody as a weakness and to feel like he has no right to complain about anything that his family does, especially when it's Sam, who needs protecting even when he's soulless, and…

okay, this is turning into a digression and a lot of oversensitive Dean-girl feels, but my point here is? Dean and Cas are both dicks. They both do things that hurt each other. I'm still not seeing abuse here as much as two people who love each other but are emotionally stunted, in different ways and for different reasons, and dealing with a lot of capital-i _Issues_ , and trying to find solace in each other but as much as love helps, it also makes things so much more complicated.

I'm not really going to do an in-depth treatment of any of the other not-so-good moments that I listed above right now, because I'm headachey and I have other writing to do, but… the curb-stomp in 5.18, for example? I don't see it as OKAY, but I also don't see it as something that Dean and/or Cas would pull out on each other all that often. I'm working on a separate meta about this particular scene in terms of its kink appeal to people, and parsing out the fine line between fantasy and reality, and addressing the accusations of it being an abusive moment.

And… yeah. I agree with all the people who find it troubling on an intellectual and emotional level, but I also don't think that this moment is necessarily abusive or part of an abusive pattern. I see it as being a really low point in Dean and Castiel's relationship. I see it as being very, very, VERY not-good and mutually hurtful. But I don't agree with calling it abusive… unless we're going to call it mutually abusive.

Which is something that I haven't seen anybody in Fandom do… ever, I think. If I have seen it, it's not coming to mind. I always see it framed in terms of ~Dean is being so terrible to Cas OMG~ OR ~[Cas just beat Dean into the ground, what the FUCK](http://stopcallingmebitch.tumblr.com/post/25365066269/sargraf-veneredirimmel-sargraf-i-gave)~ …but never in terms of, "Dean and Cas are BOTH understandable and BOTH doing morally ambiguous things right now," which is probably just something that Fandom and I are going to have to disagree about for the rest of all time, because it comes down to how we perceive situations and approach texts.

I hate reductionism. This got beat into me (metaphorically) by a couple of professors I had and particularly loved — both of whom helped me find my scholarly calling (religious studies and mysticism for the win!), and one of whom wound up getting appointed to be my mentor and confidante. I just… I can't even with reductionist interpretations. It's made my life as both a wannabe scholar/critic and a creative writer so much more difficult, but I think it's for the best that I wound up with this inability to just let things be simple? I don't know exactly what it's doing, but I choose to believe that it's for the best because it offers me emotional comfort to see it that way and thus, I try to avoid reductionism as much as I possibly can.

Which isn't to say that anyone who disagrees with me is a reductionist or engaging in reductionism, or that the meta I just linked to is reductionist, because neither of those statements is true. I'm just saying that my approach to texts is sort of compulsively anti-reductionist. I feel upset and unsatisfied with myself when I catch myself engaging in reductionism. And one of the biggest manifestations of it that I see in fandom (and in real life, but I prefer dealing with fandom) is this idea that someone has to be conclusively Right and/or Wrong, and that every situation needs someone to be Right and Wrong, Aggressor and Victim, etc.

Sure, okay. Sometimes, there are situations that are like that. Sometimes, there are conclusively Right and Wrong things. And sometimes, there are situations wherein one character is decidedly the Aggressor or the Victim. And sometimes, things _can_ be effectively labeled and put into binary distinctions like that. This is true in fiction because it's true in real life, and art and life play off of each other in so many interesting ways.

…but this kind of viewpoint encounters a lot of problems when you try to apply it to situations where it's inappropriate. where the answers aren't so easily resolved and aren't so cut and dry. and I think that any situation involving Dean/Castiel definitely falls into the category of, "situations that you can't just fit into a black-and-white worldview or make easier to understand just because you want them to be."

…well. obviously, you CAN because fandom HAS some several times over and whatnot. but I don't think that means you SHOULD?

(general you, just in case anyone gets worried or anything. if I wanted to specifically name someone as guilty of this… well, first of all, I'd just come out and name them. and secondly, I'd probably be a hypocritical little shit, because I am so _not_ completely innocent of forcing fandom situations to fit my moral views in any capacity.)

but getting back to the point: the only abuse that I see going on in the example of the Cas-on-Dean curb-stomping of 5.18 is mutual abuse because _both of them_ are being dicks to each other, and _both of them_ have very understandable reasons for this, but _both of them_ are in the wrong and need to have what my Dad would call a, "come to Jesus" moment (which is what Show would call, "a scene of sitting on the hood of the car and talking about their feelings"). BOTH OF THEM, Dean and Castiel, are at the end of their respective ropes, in that moment. And it doesn't make their actions **OKAY** , but it makes them **UNDERSTANDABLE**.

In that moment, Cas has basically lost everything. I'm pretty sure that a lot of other people have explicated their interpretations of Cas in 5.18 better and more eloquently than I'm going to do, and I wish I had some links to share because… the character whose head I have the easiest time getting into is basically always Dean (followed by Cas, Bela and/or Meg and/or Ruby (it's a tie, really), and a Lilith/Alastair tie, in that order).

But Cas has basically lost everything — at least, everything that he's ever known to be true and reliable and solid. In the past nigh on two years, he's suffered _so much_. And it's been more suffering than his eons of previous existence. His kindred are all dying — killing themselves in a war that doesn't need to be happening — and he's had to watch one of his favorite siblings (Anna) kill another one of his favorite siblings (Uriel). He's been kicked out of Heaven and exiled from home.

He rebelled, he Fell (becoming like Lucifer in the process, as Lucifer pointed out to him in 5.10), he's hunted (to the point that it's not exactly implausible that Cas would become Heaven's Public Enemy Number One if Lucifer ever died) — and he did all of this because Dean promised him that Free Will was worth fighting for. And now Dean is betraying all of that by turning around and trying to give himself over to Michael? Dean is giving up on the one thing that Cas rebelled for, after picking at the seeds of doubt and free thought that Cas confessed to in 4.07 and that Anna nurtured in 4.16? After Cas has _**lost fucking everything**_?

…Yeah, I can totally see why Cas MIGHT be a little bit pissed off at Dean. Does it make beating the ever-living shit out of Dean okay? No, it doesn't. But it makes his actions _understandable_. (Especially since let's also remember: Dean and Cas are both emotionally stunted assbutts. The situation is incredibly desperate, so Cas is even less likely to stop and ask Dean about his feelings instead of doing whatever he can, in the immediate moment, to corral Dean back to Bobby's, where they can actually deal with stuff.)

On the other hand: Dean has no idea what to do in order to see what he wants — the preservation of human life, because what good is saving Free Will if there's no one around to have it — happen except for making the sacrifice of saying, "yes" to Michael, which he's just tried to do, which is how Cas found him and could initiate the curb-stomping. Throughout the episode, Dean is all but outright stated to be suicidal and grasping at straws — but, hey, uhm… just speaking as someone who's been living with depression since I was a kid? Depression is not an excuse for being a douche to people.

An explanation, sure. It's definitely an explanation. I think it's especially so in Dean's case, since he also spent that episode dealing with some of the WORST handling of depression that I've EVER seen (and I have a parent who once told me that my suicidal ideation "doesn't even deserve to be acknowledged") — and his refusal to trust the people who care about him makes sense, with how he was raised and how he's been characterized since day one. But outright ignoring the fact that he's not the only person at the end of his rope right here, in this moment?

…Dean, bb. I love you, but no. No. No, no, NO. BAD DEAN. There are better ways to ask for help. (Of course, if you felt like you could access them, you wouldn't really be the same Dean Winchester as Canon likes to make you, but… here we are, at the old crossroads where I want better for Dean and, more than that, want Dean to want better for himself.)

TL;DR: Dean and Cas are both dicks in this moment, and they both need to stop — but they're both understandable, and what hurts me the most about that business in 5.18 is that there _isn't_ a definitive right or wrong in the situation. Show tries to create one because Show really sucks sometimes, but ultimately, it's not there just because Show says it is. If the curb-stomp moment is any kind of abusive, then I stand by my assertion that they're being mutually shitty and potentially abusive, rather than having one being unilaterally shitty and potentially abusive to the other.

Which is also what I think about their relationship overall? There's a pattern, yeah, but it's mostly of, "Dean and Cas are morally ambiguous assbutts in love, and let's just all have a moment of blunt, painful honesty here? Neither of them is a spineless, cowering woobie. They both have Issues and Baggage, they're both understandable even when they do not-okay things, and _**they both give as good as they get**_."

Maybe their love isn't all kittens and rainbows and cuddly fluffy marshmallow bullshit, but personally, I would get really fucking tired of it, if it were. I came here for the morally ambiguous assbutts who love each other until it hurts, and that's what worse for me. I understand both the impetus to create fluff for them — because it's just natural to want better for a ship that you love — and the impetus to say that they're an abusive relationship, and if either of those things works for you, then more power to you. It's your fandom too — we can share! I promise! — and you can call _I do what I want, Thor_ all you want. I'm not going to try to take your right to interpret them however you want away from you.

But, for me? I don't really see them as particularly fluffy or as abusive. I think that, like my Harry Potter example above, there is a _risk_ of Dean/Castiel potentially turning abusive, but I don't think that they _are_ and… I'm not entirely sure how much I trust Fandom with the idea of their relationship as such. There are a few writers who I think would pull it off spectacularly, but at the same time? It's a complicated and fundamentally nuanced issue, and it's not one that really lends itself well to being made easy, the way that a lot of fandom (in my experience) tends to like things.

I like my Dean/Castiel without ignoring the moments where their relationship has its darkness, but without blowing them up and defining the relationship by how they act in dire straits. I like it when they hurt each other (because I'm an incurable sadist and masochist in my shipping, it's just… it's my Thing) but I also want them to work it out because I love them together and want better for them. _Love sticks, sweat drips. Break the lock if it don't fit. A kick in the teeth is good for some; a kiss with a fist is better than none._

And as long as we don't force each other to go, "okay, fine, you're right and I'm wrong," about an issue where there IS NOT a definitive right answer? I see no reason why we can't all just coexist, live and let ship, etc.

Since I brought them up, though? The things that I think have the most potential to turn into pervasive abusive patterns for Dean and Cas are: Dean's habit of lashing out at people (which I will forever hold is a manifestation of Dean's undiagnosed and untreated depression, fuck you Show for not making that fucking canon, I hate you so much sometimes — and again, this doesn't make it OKAY, but it means that there's an explanation that means there's potential for this to not be so godawful for Dean and Cas, and Sam, and everybody);

and their habit of keeping secrets from each other (…which would really become abusive if it got turned into head-games and mind-fuckery, and I think this is where Cas really risks becoming an abuser, because boyfriend is a slippery fuck when he wants to be and he knows all of Dean's buttons and how to push them — overall? I think that their secret-keeping and trust issues are less abusive and more just something they'd have to work through on a longterm timetable, really, because both of them have pretty serious trust issues and you can't just magic those away… but I can also see the potential for abuse there).

And by way of wrapping up, I guess I'll just joss one more thing for fandom. I've seen people point to the fundamentally unbalanced nature of the Dean/Castiel relationship — specifically, the fact that Cas is an angel and able to THRASH ALL THE THINGS while Dean is a human and limited, corporeal, transient, etc. — and list it as a reason why the relationship is inherently abusive.

Admittedly, it's a point that I've sort of danced around and not really acknowledged as such in the rest of the preceding meta, and it's an important thing to remember. Cas's species and his identity as an angel is a big deal to him, and a big part of his character arc, and a HUGE part of how Show treats him and his actions… but I'm also not really seeing how or why it's inherently abusive that he's an angel and thus, inherently more powerful than Dean. …or why it makes Dean/Cas different from basically any other ship in the Supernatural 'verse.

One thing that I really like about Supernatural, on a meta level, is that the narrative and the characters' situations have so much commentary on the nature of power structures — both bigger, societal ones and personal-level hierarchies (e.g., parent/child, angel/human/monster/demon, teacher/student, debtor/person to whom the debt is owed, addict/supplier, angel or demon/vessel, FBI/police/most wanted criminal, etc.), and…

The way I see it? Most of the ships on Show have some kind of power issues — and yes, this CAN turn into something unhealthy (see: Dean/Alastair, Dean/Alpha Vamp, Dean/Godstiel). But having a power imbalance in a relationship **isn't inherently unhealthy or abusive** , even when someone is as powerful as Castiel and their partner is as comparatively lacking in power as Dean. Especially not since _Castiel has clearly learned how to hold back_ and learned how to deal with Dean (and other humans) on a level that, while not perfectly human, can at least approximate it well enough.

I mean, look at the curb-stomp scene in 5.18 again, okay? If Castiel had wanted, he could've literally beat Dean to a bloody pulp. He could've thrown Dean through a damned brick wall without batting an eye. … **But he DIDN'T.** This still doesn't make what he did okay, but it's a point to remember. Even at the end of his fucking rope and fast running out of options, Cas roughs Dean up, but doesn't do a fraction of what he's capable of doing _because he knows that Dean can only take so much_.

It would be super-cool of Show could have Dean making more of an effort to deal with Cas on Cas's level because I am well and truly sick of the human-favoring and privileging, protagonist-centered morality bullshit that Show loves to throw at me… but that's one of the many reasons why I have Fandom, I guess.

And hey, if power imbalances aren't your thing? Then that's cool, too. Your Kink Is Not Necessarily My Kink And THAT'S OKAY. I, personally, love power imbalances in my ships and think they're super-hot when done right. I love playing around with power, trust, Dominance/submission, etc.-flavored things in both my fanfic and my original fiction, and it's totally fine if these things don't appeal to you. It's one of the great things about fandom, in my opinion? That we have so many different voices all bringing something to the text?

…But pretty, pretty, PRETTY please don't try to tell me that power imbalances are inherently abusive and wrong because no. No, they aren't. There are SOME that can be very, very abusive and wrong (see again: _Dean/Alastair_ , and very likely some of the real-world intersections of privilege and oppression), but that does not describe ALL power imbalances. So, please: cut it out with the generalizing and kink-shaming bullshit, mmmkay? Mmmkay.


End file.
